Contemporary Employment Law - Case 10.5

CASE PROBLEM 10.5: PROVING AGE DISCRIMINATION

Case problem 10.5 is titled Proving Age Discrimination. This problem refers us to the case Evers v. Alliant Techsystems, Inc. In this paper, I will discuss the case Evers v. Alliant Techsystems, Inc., give a few brief facts about the ADEA, and answer the three questions presented in the problem. The questions are as follows: “What should age discrimination plaintiffs offer other than statistical evidence?” “Will statistics alone support or defeat such a claim in the courts?” and “If you were a judge deciding whether to allow the introduction of statistical evidence into the trial proceedings, what characteristics of that evidence would you want to verify before admitting it?”

Evers v. Alliant Techsystems, Inc.

Howard Evers and Charlotte Dexter filed suit against Alliant Techsystems, Inc., claiming that Alliant was in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act for terminating them because of their age. Evers began working for Honeywell in 1979 as a Liaison Engineer and then in 1981 he became a Senior Design Engineer for the Underseas System Department, where he remained until his termination. Dexter began working for Honeywell as a switchboard operator in 1964. After moving her way up through the company, she finally moved to the position of the Cost Estimating Administrator in Honeywell’s Underseas System Department. Her duties were to estimate costs that would be incurred by the U.S. and foreign governments for spare parts for the Mark 46 torpedo. In 1990, Honeywell started the company Alliant Techsystems, which was Honeywell’s defense business. Both Evers and Dexter were then considered employees of Alliant Techsystems.

In December of 1992, the top administrators were informed that there would be a “projected headcount reduction” within each department. Dexter’s manager, Theresa Haugan, was informed that she would need to terminate two employees. Haugan used the company’s Workforce Reduction Criteria to rate each of her employees to help decide who would be terminated. The system contained five express criteria: (1) performance rating, performance ranking, critical skills, cross-functional capabilities, and leadership. The employees were ranked by these criteria’s and given a score based on a point system. Haugan relied on the results of self-assessments that she had conducted in 1992. The self-assessments were made up of input from managers, human resource personnel, and the Cost Estimating Administrators. Haugan used her own observations of each employee’s performance, information in their files, as well as input from their managers. After the completion of the points system, Haugan sent the results out to all of the Administrators. Dexter never showed any concerns of her score to Haugan. Dexter was chosen for termination. Evers’